From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from d01relay02.pok.ibm.com (d01relay02.pok.ibm.com [9.56.227.234]) by e3.ny.us.ibm.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id k0SGrvhU008696 for ; Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:53:58 -0500 Received: from d01av03.pok.ibm.com (d01av03.pok.ibm.com [9.56.224.217]) by d01relay02.pok.ibm.com (8.12.10/NCO/VERS6.8) with ESMTP id k0SGrvrY150718 for ; Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:53:57 -0500 Received: from d01av03.pok.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by d01av03.pok.ibm.com (8.12.11/8.13.3) with ESMTP id k0SGrvbv022834 for ; Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:53:57 -0500 Message-ID: <43DBA1A0.6010708@us.ibm.com> Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 08:53:52 -0800 From: Sridhar Samudrala MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [patch 3/9] mempool - Make mempools NUMA aware References: <43D95A2E.4020002@us.ibm.com> <43D96633.4080900@us.ibm.com> <43D96A93.9000600@us.ibm.com> <20060127025126.c95f8002.pj@sgi.com> <43DAC222.4060805@us.ibm.com> <20060128081641.GB1605@elf.ucw.cz> <43DB9877.7020206@us.ibm.com> <20060128164158.GD1858@elf.ucw.cz> In-Reply-To: <20060128164158.GD1858@elf.ucw.cz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Pavel Machek Cc: Matthew Dobson , Paul Jackson , clameter@engr.sgi.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, andrea@suse.de, linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: Pavel Machek wrote: >>>> I still think some sort of reserve pool >>>> is necessary to give the networking stack a little breathing room when >>>> under both memory pressure and network load. >>>> >>>> >>> "Lets throw some memory there and hope it does some good?" Eek? What >>> about auditing/fixing the networking stack, instead? >>> >>> >> The other reason we need a separate critical pool is to satifsy critical >> GFP_KERNEL allocations >> when we are in emergency. These are made in the send side and we cannot >> block/sleep. >> > > If sending routines can work with constant ammount of memory, why use > kmalloc at all? Anyway I thought we were talking receiving side > earlier in the thread. > > Ouch and wait a moment. You claim that GFP_KERNEL allocations can't > block/sleep? Of course they can, that's why they are GFP_KERNEL and > not GFP_ATOMIC. > I didn't meant GFP_KERNEL allocations cannot block/sleep? When in emergency, we want even the GFP_KERNEL allocations that are made by critical sockets not to block/sleep. So my original critical sockets patches changes the gfp flag passed to these allocation requests to GFP_KERNEL|GFP_CRITICAL. Thanks Sridhar -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org